The winter climate is temperate and healthy, the thermometer ranging from 51° to 71° Fahr. between October and May. In the summer months the heat is almost tropical; from July to the end of October it ranges between 80° and 90°. Snow is unknown, but hail occurs in winter, and much rain usually falls between December and February. The northerly winds are bracing, bub the southeast wind, called the sirocco, which brings the warm air from the African deserts, and then takes up the salt sea mists, is very deleterious; it occurs suddenly, chiefly in August and September, occasionally in the spring, and fortunately lasts usually but a few hours. The “gregale” (“eurokylon” of Acts xxvii. 14) is a strong north-east wind which occasionally blows in the winter months with great fury and force for two or three days together, especially in November and February, rendering it dangerous to cross the harbour, sometimes tearing up stone walls and landing-steps, and otherwise doing much damage.

The Maltese are a strong well-formed race, the men dark, handsome, and lithe, the women with black eyes and fine hair and an easy carriage; as in other Eastern nations, the working classes grow old at a comparatively early age. They are a cheerful, good-humoured, and industrious people, sober and abstemious, though quick-tempered and addicted to the use of the knife. Bread or pasta, with a few olives, a little oil, or milk cheese, forms the chief support of the poor, who seldom or never eat meat, and drink but little of the light wine of the country. The gentry have a large admixture of Spanish, Italian, and French, but among the people in general the Arab race and character predominate, influenced by contact with Sicily. Of the native language 70 per cent, consists of Arabic words, the rest being chiefly a corrupt Italian; that spoken in Gozo is the purest Maltese. The festivals and ceremonials of the Roman Church are kept up to an extraordinary degree, together with a few that seem to be derived from the Greek Church. The perpetual ringing of monotonous church bells, and the peculiar method of striking time, are relics of South Italian customs.

Malta is divided into twenty-six casais or village districts, Gozo into nine; some of the villages are large and populous, each having its church, often large and handsome. Near the middle of the island, on sharply rising ground, stands the ancient capital, called Civitas Melita by the Romans and oldest writers, Medina (i.e., the city) by the Saracens, Notabile (“jocale notabile, et insigne coronae regiae,” as it is called in a charter by Alphonso, 1428) under the Sicilian rule, and Citta Vecchia (old city) by the knights. The cathedral, overthrown by an earthquake in 1693, but rebuilt, stands on the reputed site of the house of Publius, Paul’s friend; many Maltese gentry live in this town, and the English utilize some of the buildings. The Roman remains and catacombs of Citta Vecchia must not be forgotten. Since 1570 the chief town has been Valetta, —a city built on a ridge of rock (Mount Sceberras) which runs like a tongue into the middle of a bay, which it thus divides into two great harbours, subdivided again by three other peninsulas into creeks. On two of these peninsulas, and at their base, are built the aggregate of towns called the Three Cities, part of which (grown up under the old Fort St Angelo) is much older than the coming of the knights, and is called Vittoriosa in commemoration of the siege of 1565. Valetta, including the suburb Florian, is about 2 miles long and ∣ mile wide; Fort St Elmo, with a lighthouse, stands on the point; the summer suburb Sliema lies on the point which encloses the west or Marsamusceit harbour; Fort Ricasoli on the opposite point enclosing the east or grand harbour. The streets of Valetta, paved with stone, run along and across the ridge, and end on each side towards the water in steep flights of steps. Many of the houses, which are of stone throughout, with flat roofs, are large and luxuriously built; wooden covered balconies project from the windows and give a peculiar aspect to the streets. There are several fine public buildings, as the governor’s palace, the new opera-house, the public library, the auberges or lodges of the knights, especially the Auberge de Castile, the English church built by Queen Adelaide and others. Roman Catholic churches in Valetta are very numerous: the cathedral of St John is famous for its rich inlaid marbles, its Brussels tapestries, its roof painted by Matteo Preti (1661-99), and the picture by Caravaggio, the Decollation of John the Baptist. The hospital of the knights contains one of the longest rooms in Europe, 503 feet in length, without a central support. The extensive bagnios under the rock, formerly occupied by the slaves of the knights, are now used for naval stores. The knights strengthened Valetta and its harbours by bastions, curtain-walls, lines, and forts, towards the sea, towards the land, and on every available point, taking advantage in every particular of the natural rock and of the marvellous advantages of situation, rendering it then almost impregnable. The work of fortifying the place with modern armament is carried on by the British Government, which possesses there the finest naval hospital in Europe, a military prison, and other necessary institutions, including immense subterranean stores of grain. New sanitary and water works and dwellings for the over-crowded poor have lately been undertaken by the local authorities. The city is clean and well-regulated, gay with the motley throng of all nations that continually come and go, and presenting many features common to the East; the influx of winter visitors attracted by the mild climate and social gaieties has of late years proved a source of wealth to the inhabitants. A railroad from Valetta to Citta Vecchia,the first in the island, is now nearly completed.

The importance of Malta lies, as of old, in its harbours, which render it a splendid port of call, repair, or refuge, as well as a fine naval station, in its capabilities as a depot for coals and stores, in its hospitals, and in its strength as a military station. Its position in the Mediterranean is of the utmost value towards keeping a clear highway to the East and to India. During the eighty-two years of British, occupation the population, trade, and produce have largely increased. The government, created by royal letters patent of 11th May 1849, consists of a council of eighteen members, eight elected by the Maltese (about two thousand three hundred electors), nine chosen by the crown, and the governor, with a salary of £5000, who is usually a military officer. To these were added by letters patent of May 1881 an executive council of three members to advise and assist the governor. The council have powers to make laws and to vote money; this last was restricted by the British Government in 1875, leading to a protest in the following year by the elected eight. The government of the islands presents peculiarities owing to the combination of military and civil duties. Several recent inquiries on taxation, education, &c., have led to important changes during the last two years. The consolidated revenue is at the disposal of the crown through the governor and council; Malta is self-supporting, costing the imperial exchequer little beyond the military and naval establishments, and even contributing £5000 annually towards the former. The revenue arises chiefly from import duties (of which a large proportion accrues from a tax of 10s. a quarter upon grain) and tonnage dues. [table]

The tonnage of vessels entering and clearing equals that at Gibraltar; in 1878it amounted to 6,503,859 (5,669,046 of which was for British vessels), and in 1880 it was 6,147,234. In 1879 the value of imports actually landed was £794,565, and of exports £216,050,—a value of about £18,700,000 merely touching at the port. The figures fluctuate; in the following year they fell considerably. In 1837 the revenue was but £95,600, while but one steamship, of 137 tons, entered the harbour; in 1879 2894 steamers, with a tonnage of 2,781,806 entered. In the naval yard numerous vessels are repaired yearly; in 1876— 77 these amounted to 39 ironclad and other ships and 43 smaller vessels. One arm of the harbour is devoted to a coaling station, where enormous quantities of coal are annually imported and sold (384,272 tons in 1880). The British Mediterranean fleet is stationed there for six months of the year, the strength of the naval forces being usually about 5000 men. The strength of the military in the island is usually about 6500, the largest garrison in any British colony.

The population, which in 1837 was 115,570, was 154,892 in 1880, exclusive of British troops and their families, about 24,000 being English and foreigners; it is rapidly increasing, and is unequally distributed, the greater part being settled in the large casais or villages on the eastern half of Malta, including the densely populated Valetta; large tracts to the west are bare and but sparsely inhabited; about one-third of the island is rocky and uncultivated. Malta has now 1510 inhabitants to the square mile, Gozo 962. In 1879 there were 9868 children (about two-fifths of these at school age) attending elementary schools, including 768 students at the university and two lyceums; in 1880 the total was 9595. All the casais of Malta and Gozo (with but one or two exceptions), besides Valetta and the Cities, have schools, which are now placed on the same system as the board schools in England; great efforts are being made to extend the acquisition of the English language, which till recently was neglected in favour of Italian. The director of public education, besides the elementary, has under his care several secondary schools, two lyceums in Vittoriosa and in Valetta, and the university (founded by the knights in 1768), with faculties of philosophy and arts, law, medicine,’ and theology. In Valetta is a large public library founded by the knights in 1760, containing 48,000 volumes, open free daily; in Gozo is a smaller one.

History and Antiquities.— Malta (Melita), with its sister Gozβ (Gaulus or Gaudus), has from time immemorial been a place of importance to whatever race wished to hold the highway of the Mediterranean, whether Phoenician, Punic, Roman, or Arab. Thus even the stories of Homer have a semblance of truth, for the Ogygian isle where Ulysses took refuge has been supposed to be Malta or Gozo, in both of which tradition (born of the poem) yet points out the grottoes of Calypso. The earliest inhabitants of whose presence we have any actual trace are the Phoenicians, from whom we have several important inscriptions which tell of them and their temples, several curious images believed to belong to their worship, and many specimens of their pottery and glass, chiefly found in tombs, some bearing Phoenician characters and potters’ marks. Sepulchral caves and clusters of rock-hewn tombs, especially those in the hills of Bingemma, in several of which terra cotta sarcophagi have been found, are referred with reason to a Phoenician or a Puħic origin; Caruana’s Report gives a list of these in eight places, distinguishing them from numerous Greek and Christian catacombs which also exist in the islands. The most remarkable remains are three rough stone erections, one in Gozo (Torre dei Giganti), and two in Malta, about a mile apart (Hagiar Kim and Mnaidra), which mainly consist of several apsidal chambers side by side, the walls ef which are built of enormous horizontal and upright stones. In Malta the ruins show evidence of much skill in stone-cutting; the entrances to the chambers consist of three large slabs of stone in place of doorpost, each smaller than and at a little distance from the one outside it; several have well-shaped holes for ropes ot other fastening; other slabs have sharply-squared holes and shelves cut in the solid stone; others again are ornamented with “pit-markings” or little depressions cut evenly all over the surface of the stone. A table or altar is also found in some of the rooms, a massive slab of stone supported on an upright formed like the trunk of a tree; in one case the two ends of the slab are carefully mortised into the walls at each side, the chamber being very small, and apparently intended specially for its reception. Hagiar Kim was excavated by the Government in 1840, when considerable traces of the action of fire were found on some of the walls, as well as buried ashes. In other rooms were found quantities of bones, many fragments of pottery, lamps, bowls, &c., nine images, and a small ornamented altar (Archseol., vol. xxix. p. 227). The ruins in Gozo were excavated about 1827 (Archaeol., vol. xxii. p. 294). All these buildings stand on commanding positions, high on the side or the shoulder of steep hills. They have been usually considered Phoenician temples; and, on comparison of them with what is known of the great temple of Melkart at the south-east corner of Malta, the presumption is strong that these too were built by the same race, at some very early period. The bilingual inscription found there belongs to a later age, the Graeco-Punic time, to which Greek coins found in both islands and a few other remains bear evidence. It is probable that the islands shared in some degree the varying fortunes that followed on the wars in Sicily, which took place as Greek drove cut Phoenician, as Carthaginian drove out Greek and tried to regain the ancient possession of the mother-land, as finally Rome conquered all. During the First Punic War (264-241 b.c. ) Malta seems to have been conquered and reconquered more than once (Orosius, iv. c. 8). In the Second Punic War the Carthaginians, under Hamilcar, son of Gisco, gave it up to Titus Sempronius, 218 b.c. (Livy, xxi. 51).

In the pursuit of manufactures and commerce Malta had attained a high degree of prosperity under the Phoenicians, which still existed under the Romans of the Augustan age. It was especially famous for its textile fabrics (probably of cotton, which is grown and spun there to this day); the Sicilian praetor Verres sent there for women’s woven garments. The inhabitants were rich, and there were many artificers of all kinds. Ovid speaks of it as a fertile island {Fast., iii. 567). The” remains formerly existed (unfortunately now for the most part dispersed or destroyed) of several fine Graeco-Roman temples, such as the temple of Juno spoken of by Cicero and Valerius Maximus, whose ornaments and fine ivories and carved figures of Victory tempted more than one sacrilegious robber; the temple of Proserpine, which we learn from an inscription was repaired by Chrestion, a freedman of Augustus, procurator of Malta; and the temple of Apollo at the chief town Melita, which with a theatre shared the munificence of a wealthy Maltese under the Antonine rule; these and the ruins of a princely Roman dwelling with mosaics, system of water supply, &c., at the same place, are buta few signs of the luxury enjoyed in the islands. Diodorus noticed the beauty and adornment of the houses in Malta in his time, a few years after the shipwreck of St Paul. One of the islanders was a friend of Cicero, who had thoughts of retiring there himself. A mole and important harbour works, discovered a few years ago, show that the Romans were not behind in strengthening the natural advantages of the islands for shelter. Inscriptions recording municipal institutions there date from the time of Hadrian; how much earlier they possessed them is unknown. Before then we hear of Chrestion the procurator mentioned above, and a Roman governor under Augustus, Lucius Castricius, styled πpωτos Meλι- τalωv , “chief man of the Maltese” (Caruana, 1882, p. 134; 1881, pp. 20, 21), just as, half a century later, Publius was πpωτos τηs ΐ'ήσ-ου, “chief man of the island” (Acts xxviii. 7); all these were probably concerned in the local government. The Romans retained the Maltese group for many centuries. At the division of the empire in 337 a.d. it passed with Italy, Illyria, and Africa to Constans; after the reunion, and the final division after the death of Theodosius in 395, Malta, as one of the isles of the Mediterranean, remained with the empire of the East....